


Back Where We Belong

by infinite_diversity



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Family Problems, Memoriam, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, The Instincts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_diversity/pseuds/infinite_diversity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer is four years old. Diana is sleeping on the couch tonight, and William doesn't know what to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back Where We Belong

The woman he loved. Or had once loved.

 

She had, for whatever reason, insisted on sleeping downstairs on the couch instead of their bedroom. William had not tried to argue with her, but he didn’t manage to fall asleep next to the cold emptiness where his wife should be. He had now been laying here for almost three hours staring at the dark ceiling and listening to the cars rushing by - the merciless Las Vegas summer forced them to keep every bedroom window open at all times.

 

Or most of the time. Basically, whenever his wife did not violently insist that _they_ would try to infiltrate her mind through an open window.

 

William sighed and decided that he could not stay in this bed any longer. He got up, left the room and quietly went down the stairs, careful not to wake either his wife or their son. Before entering the kitchen to get a glass of water, he went through the living room, where his wife was asleep on the couch.

 

She looked incredibly fragile lying there, without a blanket or even a pillow. She had obviously forgotten to get into a proper nightdress and was still wearing her light brown sweater and a skirt. William leaned over and carefully brushed her long, blond hair away from her face. There were definitely too many lines in it, he thought. But now that she was asleep, William was able to see the woman he loved again.

 

Now she was once again the pretty, intelligent university professor that he had fallen in love with. She had always been a very strong woman that knew how to get what she wanted. Incredibly gifted, slightly arrogant, in old-fashioned clothing and never seen without a book in her hands. She worshipped Bob Dylan. Her humor was quite dry, and she liked making jokes that other people didn't understand.

Still she cared a lot about the students in her literature curses, although she couldn't find an ounce of respect for anyone who did not show enough interest in her magical world of books and their authors. William knew that he was the only exception of that rule - he was a true businessman and couldn't tell the difference between Wilde and Proust.

 

She made great sacrifices for her son, who she loved more than anything, at least at the times when she didn't suspect him of being involved in some government conspiracy.

 

William remembered the awful time when she had to stop taking her medications due to her pregnancy very clearly - she had gone through those nine months of terror without even complaining once. She tried everything to offer their boy what she called "intellectual stimulation".

 

She had started to read 15th century literature to him when he was two, and still did so. She filled dozens of notebooks with old poems and songs that he would then learn by heart. Sometimes, she would take him to the theater or even the opera. William himself could not see why a four-year-old should be able to play chess and recite the works of Emily Brontë and always tried to engage him in "normal" activities for young boys, like soccer or softball. He and his wife would have long arguments about it. Literature and her son were the only two things she was really passionate about.

 

William realized he had been standing over his sleeping wife for several minutes. As quietly as possible, he made his way into the kitchen and got a glass of water. He would actually have preferred something alcoholic, but he knew that it wouldn't make him feel any better. Since he couldn't go back to sleep anyway, he took the time to wash the glass in the sink, dry it with a towel and put it back in the cupboard. _Why can't I do the same with my family? Just wash off all the dirt and put us back where we belong._

 

On his way back, he once again stopped to look at his wife. So fragile.

 

"Oh, Diana." He whispered. He wanted her back so badly. Sometimes he felt like she was dead. Her body was still there, walking, talking and breathing, but often everything else seemed gone. Her mind, her soul, her spirit, the thing that defined who she was, a significant part of her frontal lobe activity - however you wanted to call it. And when she was finally lucid for one day, she was depressed, although she tried to hide it, feeling like nothing but a burden for her family.

 

William took a thin, folded blanket from a nearby armchair and spread it out over his wife. Of course there was no way she would be cold, but he just needed to do something that made him feel like he was protecting her. Even though he knew that she had been hunted down and kidnapped by the only thing she couldn't be protected from - her own mind. And right now, it seemed to him, it was holding her hostage and torturing her with every known method. And most probably they wouldn't be able to save her, according to the doctors.

 

Reluctantly William decided that he couldn't spend the whole night watching his wife sleep and went back upstairs. Shortly before reaching their bedroom door, he saw a thin line of light shining on the hallway floor in front of Spencer's room, indicating that his son was still awake. William went over, knocked on the door that showed Spencer's name in several different alphabets, and entered the room.

 

"Spencer, it's 2 a.m.. Why are you still awake?"

 

The little boy didn't even try to hide the huge, ancient-looking book he had obviously been reading. His longish brown hair was messy and he was wearing green pajamas that were a little too long at the sleeves.

 

"It's actually 2.14 a.m., Dad. I was reading," Spencer said without even looking at his watch. Then he reached for his bedside table, found his glasses and carefully put them onto his nose.

 

William smiled at the tired young boy in front of him that obviously preferred finishing a good book to sleeping. That was so much like his mother.

 

"Of course you were," he said and sat down on the bed next to his son.

 

Spencer looked at his dad anxiously. "Dad… Why are you crying?"

 

"I'm not -" But he stopped in the middle of the sentence when he reached out and found that his cheeks were wet.

 

Spencer frowned a little. "It's because of Mom, isn't it? Because of what she said yesterday?"

 

_I bet he remembers every single word of it,_ William thought to himself. _And will still do when he's thirty. The poor kid._    

 

“No, it’s just… I…” He stopped. How did you explain something like that to your four-year-old son?

“It’s nothing.”

 

Spencer looked at him with wide, sad eyes. Their warm brown was full of pain. He had William’s eyes, Diana’s were blue.

 

“You know, statistically, there is a 25 percent chance she will recover,” the little boy said.

 

William snorted. He hated when his son talked about statistics. He knew Spencer loved them, but to William, they seemed too unreal. They were a real family with real problems, not some dot on a graph. People, not paper and pencil. It was a simple concept he tried to teach his son, but the boy was helplessly fascinated by numbers, by their averages and mathematics in general. At least he had tried, in his own way, to offer him some comfort.

 

“We’re not statistics, Spencer,” he said quietly. Spencer looked down at his hands, and immediately William felt sorry.

 

“You’re right, buddy. It’s all gonna be fine, you hear me?” He put his hand on one of his son’s thin shoulders. “You really should sleep now.”

 

Spencer nodded and yawned. He put the book on the floor next to his bed - it was too large for the bedside table - as carefully as if it was a bird with broken wings. Then he took off his glasses again and crawled under his blanket.

 

“Goodnight, dad.”

 

William left the room and silently closed the door. When the light didn’t stop shining through underneath the doorframe, he opened it again.

 

“Aren’t you gonna turn off your lamp?”, William asked.

 

“I don’t like the dark,” his son answered quietly. William sighed. He had forgotten that. It had started a few weeks ago, and usually he didn’t even notice, but Spencer was definitely terrified of darkness. The boy had come up with several scientific explanations for it, but William suspected that it was a result of the problems they had at home.

 

“Okay. I don’t mind, as long as you go to sleep,” William said, finally leaving the room and making his way back to his own.   

 

Lying on his bed again, staring at the ceiling, he let his mind wander. Once more, he thought of the glass he had cleaned before.

 

_Back where we belong._

It had never been supposed to be like this. But now there was no going back, and William wasn’t sure if he was equipped to go on. Was he supposed to be? He was an attorney. He was used to _other people_ having problems. They had been a small, happy family; a businessman, a college professor and a baby.

 

Whose fault was this? Diana’s? Spencer’s? His own? How could he blame a mentally ill woman or a four-year-old boy? But then again, what had he done to deserve this? Why was everything so unfair?    

 

Realizing that he sounded like a whiny teenager, William got up and sat down at his desk, pulling out papers and spreading them out in front of him. He started working. Writing, filing, analyzing, commenting. He worked in complete silence, the only sound coming from his pen scratching over the pages.

 

For now, the work distracted him. But he wouldn’t be able to stay up and work his way to the morning every night. His pen fell down and a paper was splattered with ink as he covered his face with his hands. He couldn’t go on like this. He just couldn’t.

 

_Our family is falling apart, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am the father, I should protect them, but I can’t. God help me, I can’t. But if I leave - if I actually leave, what will happen to my family? No, I can’t leave. Or can I?_

_Isn’t there anything that can get us back to where we belong?_


End file.
